Hi Albena,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked Stage 5: I have an interest that is not only enjoyable but also aligns with my personal values .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were achievement, self-direction, and benevolence.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was conscientiousness.
You said your top three talents were analytic, social, and artistic / spatial.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to apply to graduate wchool .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Prepare for panel discussion .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Will be financially stable .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Life gets in the way .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I get home, I will start preparing my answers .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in Academics .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt Attacked when receiving critical feedback, and Attacked when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as Something else .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .
In one word, you said it made you feel Fulfilled .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| Talent is the rate at which you learn |
| That interest is that spontaneously engages your attention |
| Na |
| Exploration before exploitation |
| Committing to a goal |
| Na |
| None |
| None |
| Mentors are people who take an active interest in your development |
| I really enjoyed the part on Viktor Frankl - what an amazing book he's written |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Ishaan Lal |
| :) |
| Albena’s calm and composed presence is perhaps the most underrated aspect of our group’s dynamics. Her ability to think critically about the course material diffused on to all of us, allowing for much better comprehension. Albena is also a very considerate team member and person. Nearly every week, she would always ask us group members if we wanted some candy, and would grab some for all of us at the front of the class. I, as well as my other group members, are certainly grateful for Albena’s consistent small and considerate actions. She would also often ask us about life events that happened in the past weeks, which made all of us feel very cared for.
Albena’s discovery project was about 3D printing and academic goals. I immediately enjoyed how she aligned her interest of 3D printing with one of her current passions which is psychology by going out of her way to get an FMRI to get a scan of her brain, which she later 3D printed. She also ended up 3D printing cookie cutters, which makes sense, because another one of her hobbies/passions is bakery! I think it was really neat that she was able to further her existing passions by picking up a new skill that she was interested in. In terms of academic goals, we are all very happy to hear that she did work with a professor and the professor agreed to have Albena as a grad student, which ended up being in line with Albena’s achievement goal. Overall, Albena put together a really cool project that combined a lot of her passions, but still found a way to further all of the passions.
|
| Alivia Jiang |
| There are so many traits that Albena exemplifies that I strive to develop by the time I am a senior. As part of Grit Lab, we’ve talked about finding something that interests you greatly, and committing yourself to that interest – not getting distracted by potential “side quests” along the way. I believe that Albena is an amazing example of this, both inside and outside the academic realm. From our discussions this semester, whether she’s talking about a new book that she has been reading or just her love for baking, I can get a strong sense that she is someone who is very certain in herself and her path, and that is something I not only admire, but dearly respect. Furthermore, I admire her wisdom and insight. Especially as the youngest in the group, I’ve learned so much from the followup questions she acts to challenge my thinking at times and force me to dig deeper into my thought processes. She’s encouraged me to approach problems in new ways, as well as to view life as something to take one step at a time. I will greatly miss her and wish her the best of luck as she moves forward in her studies!
Albena’s Discovery Project was sampling oriented, a combination of her creative and academic interests. I was fascinated with how many things she managed to 3D print, all the way to the model of her own brain. What I appreciated most about her project was how she led from the very start with her own interests, and through our conversations as well as the final presentation, this is very clearly exhibited. Her outcomes were successful, even getting into her graduate school program, so I think that she very clearly demonstrated how interests can provide clear self direction to achieve the success that she has. Throughout, I appreciated how reflective she was of this point, which really helped her passion shine through into her final presentation. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.